Slashdot reported on NASA's plans to use more FPGA chips instead of normal hard-wired CPUs. Here's a link to the .doc at NASA's site with their press release (.doc? Someone teach NASA HTML, please). Anyway, the FPGA vs. CPU debate is one that seems to have gained renewed interest as of late. Do you want a hard-wired CPU that you have to write compilers to support, or an FPGA where you change the way the chip operates to suit your needs? That's the big question. I have to wonder if Cell will have some FPGA tech built into it.

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What news?(6:20pm EST Sat Mar 31 2001)I'm a little suprised that this is a news item. Every CPU manufactuer/designer has been using Programmable Gate Arrays to simulate the design of the cpu's they are in the pocess of developing. I have seen Motorolla's “plywood CPUs” where they pasted multiple 1 MegaGate FPGAs from Xylinx. Software developers had to use these boards as their development systems. If you look at the pictures of the boards provided with this new item you get the idea. The screen shots of the development system for the FPGAs looks like a pictoral form of VHDL or WARP. Labview at the logic gate level!! What should be news are the families of CPLD ( Complex Programmable Logic Devices ) that integrate CPU cores like XCore from Motorolla and CPLD arrays and on chip RAM. Atmel make a great part. Imagine a barebones process core that can interface to just about anything and where the drivers that provide the interface is implemented as hardware. Very fast! Using this kind of parts it is possible to build very complex processor arrays. Almost any application specific architecture to support SIMD or MIND designs. It is interesting to think about what kind of applications the government has used this type of systems for. Very large arrays like this are probably being used by the likes of NSA to factor 128 bit ( or larger ) RSA public keys in near real time to decrypt all those secure internet messsages, bank transactions, Cell phone conversations. - by Dave